As the media delights in a stream of haunting photos of burned-out Tottenham, the excuses start to pour in. For the Left this is not a story about hundreds of people deciding that the rule of law is not for them and that violence is the way to vent their frustrations. Who would have thought that Ken Livingstone would be so cynical to take advantage of a major breakdown in law and order to get this election message across?
Via his useful Guardian spokesman @DaveHill, Livingstone is quoted as having said “economic stagnation & cuts imposed by the Tory government create social division [as under Thatcher].”
Ahh yes, economic stagnation. All the fault of Boris Johnson and the Tory party! Let’s forget the root causes of our money struggles (ten years of Labour economic maladministration and running a large public deficit while the economy was growing strongly) and blame Boris and Cameron and Osborne. And as for those “cuts”, well, we haven’t actually seen any of them yet so how can they possibly be a cause?
If Mr Livingstone and his idiot friends wanted to make a real impact they would be making the case for the rule of law over thuggery, the case for raising complaints through the established mechanisms over violent disorder, the case for allowing the legal process to take its course over instant over-reaction and blame allocation.
And this chancer wants to be Mayor of London again? He wants his friends to be in power in Westminster again? If so, he is running a pretty obvious “core vote” strategy here. I’m not sure the owners of the destroyed homes and businesses and the many many law-abiding citizens of London will agree with him.
Have you seen this website: http://www.londonstreetgangs.com/ found it linked to on that Dave Hill piece in the comments.
I have seen the website before. I think the term “gang” is overused. There is quite a difference between groups of silly little boys going around robbing or dealing drugs and organised crime, in my humble opinion.
Hence the term “street gang”
“he is running a pretty obvious “core vote” strategy here. I’m not sure the owners of the destroyed homes and businesses and the many many law-abiding citizens of London will agree with him.”
They’ll have forgotten about this by then…
“They’ll have forgotten about this by then…”
C’mon! The voters don’t give a s**t. It’s either Left or Right. End of.